Still in the dark about White Night festival's program

Dewi Cooke

Michael Blazy's foam installation Bouquet Final 2 will be in the festival.

IT'S BEEN derided by one critic as a ''schoolies for culture'', but the biggest question surrounding the Baillieu government's vaunted White Night festival remains what, exactly, it will be.

One month out from its dusk-till-dawn debut on February 23, the all-night arts and culture festival's final program is still yet to be confirmed.

Critics have fixed the new festival with the schoolies tag but that doesn't bother at least one of the participants. .

''That's kind of fantastic in its way, because why does it always have to be in the white cube and why does it always have to have the snobbish element to it?'' art critic and curator Ashley Crawford said.

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Just weeks before the festival is held, unknown elements include the musical line-up for a 12-hour concert at Flinders Street Station, as well as details for a food truck ''village'' and which city bars and restaurants will be taking up Premier Ted Baillieu's invitation to stay open late.

In a statement, festival creative director Andrew Walsh said the final program would be announced ''imminently'' and pointed out the timeline for last year's Paris event was similar. The White Night Facebook page suggests it will be announced on Thursday.

A government spokeswoman said local restaurants and businesses had responded positively to the event and that more details would come soon.

Taking its cues from successful Nuit Blanche events that have run globally from Paris to Buenos Aires, White Night will see the city's major arts institutions opening late or all night, as well as visual art, music and theatrical performances in pop-up venues across the city centre.

Crawford is co-curating, with Andrew Walsh The World Below, a subterranean experience commissioned for White Night and staged beneath the Town Hall. It will feature performances from art rock band the Histrionics, a sound installation and, in one space, a complete re-enactment of a scene from the movie Blade Runner. ''This is kind of our Hades to Andrew's heaven upstairs,'' he said.

But some other pieces were plucked directly from Nuits Blanche overseas including French artist Michel Blazy's Bouquet Final 2, while events such as the pre-scheduled Victorian Opera's gala concert for new artistic director Richard Mills have only recently been rebadged to include a reference to White Night.